Under the changes, announced by Environment Minister Tony Burke in March, the Federal Government would be required to approve CSG and large coal developments where there was a significant impact on water.

Changes to CSG approval methods 'unnecessary and wrong'

ACTIVISTS in northern New South Wales, and not a desire to protect the environment, drove the decision to introduce a federal water trigger for coal seam gas approvals.

Rob Millhouse, the vice-president of policy and corporate affairs with QGC, told a Senate committee the proposed amendments to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act were indefensible and had been rushed before Parliament without industry consultation.

Under the changes, announced by Environment Minister Tony Burke in March, the Federal Government would be required to approve CSG and large coal developments where there was a significant impact on water.

The bill passed the lower house during the last parliamentary session and is now before the Senate.

Mr Millhouse questioned the government's motives for introducing the changes, accusing it of bowing to the anti-CSG movement rather than following proper processes.

"There is a serious question for the country as a whole as to whether activists and activism determines public policy," Mr Millhouse said.

"Is it to resolve water resource problems, or is it to deal with activism in northern NSW?

"The amendment is not about environmental protection, it is about activism. If it were about environmental protection, why does it stop with coal and coal seam gas, who use 4% of Australia's water?"

Mr Millhouse described the bill as "unnecessary and wrong" because it "discriminated" against coal and gas and provided no greater environmental protection.

He said it "defied logic" water-intensive industries like agriculture had been excluded from the "fundamentally flawed" bill, although he was at pains to stress QGC was not advocating for the inclusion of other industries.

QGC, the company developing the $20 billion QCLNG project on Curtis Island off Gladstone, instead wants the government to withdraw the bill and was simply using agriculture to illustrate why the proposals were wrong, Mr Millhouse said.

In his opening statement to the committee Mr Millhouse described the bill as a "Trojan horse" designed to include other operations, including farming, down the track.

This fear that a federal water trigger for CSG and coal could be expanded to include agriculture was behind the National Farmers' Federation opposition to the bill, the organisation's natural resource manager Deborah Kerr told the committee.

Ms Kerr said the NFF had voted overwhelmingly in June last year to oppose a federal water trigger under the EPBC Act.

The NFF's position is at odds with NSW Farmers, which supports the proposed changes.

But Ms Kerr said a majority of NFF members believed "the benefit (of a water trigger) to a subset of farmers in NSW was too big of a risk to the entire agriculture industry".

"And those risks are around agriculture being bound by a future Parliament to this bill," Ms Kerr said.

In announcing the changes in March Mr Burke said the government had "neither the desire, nor the capacity ... to suddenly become the approval authority over every farm dam in the nation".

The committee also took evidence from the Mineral Council of Australia and the Australia Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, both of which raised a number of concerns with the bill and called for it to be withdrawn.

Later in the day economist Tristan Knowles told the committee there was no evidence to support industry claims the water trigger would cause massive delays and cost blowouts.

Senator Waters said an admission by MCA CEO Mitchell Hooke had been lobbying the government to water down the bill was cause for concern.

"In an age of food insecurity, state governments are letting the coal seam gas industry run rampant, despite clear warnings from the National Water Commission and CSIRO that we don't know how destructive this high-risk industry will be for our precious water resources in the long term," Senator Waters said.

"We can't let the mining magnates get away without federal scrutiny of their impacts on our water."

Senator Waters said she would be seeking to amend the bill to make it apply retrospectively to projects approved just before the government's announcement.